


telephone lines running across the sky

by whimsicalMelancholy



Category: Block B
Genre: M/M, or romantic however you wanna see it, this could be construed as a really tight friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4715618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalMelancholy/pseuds/whimsicalMelancholy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's times like this Jihoon looks so vulnerable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	telephone lines running across the sky

Taeil stirs in his sleep, and eventually is roused by a presence at his doorway. He squints and sees his best friend Jihoon, standing there, clad in the monkey blankets Taeil had gifted him for his birthday. Jihoon is shivering, and his eyes are wide, wide with fright and tears streaming down his reddened cheeks.

Taeil doesn’t sigh or shake his head, but instead he smiles and Jihoon does too, tentatively, as he shuffles across the room to Taeil’s bed. Taeil makes room for the larger man on his small bed, built for a small man like Taeil and not for two, so Taeil and Jihoon have to squish close together, not that Taeil really minds, he thinks he sleeps better in the warm presence of Jihoon anyway. Taeil shifts so he can hold Jihoon, and feels the other nuzzle into his warmth. Jihoon is still shivering, but it seems to be less severe with Taeil holding him.

“Another nightmare?” Taeil whispers quietly, his soprano voice a soothing calm to Jihoon’s ears. Jihoon merely nods his head a little. Taeil hums understandingly. Jihoon’s been having these awful nightmares recently, almost four times a week, and Taeil is worried. The most frequently occurring one is where all of his bandmates die, and only Taeil is left. But then Taeil turns into “a monster, horrible, horrible, horrible” and leaves Jihoon too, crying and shaking in the darkness. Taeil hates this, hates this so much, and wishes Jihoon could just live his life without any stress or worries, wishes the world wouldn’t have to weigh him and his golden smile down so much.

It’s times like these the Jihoon look so fragile and easily hurt. Not on television, when he’s being hounded by cameras that want to capture and broadcast his every move, not even at the dorm when he surrounds himself with a seemingly impenetrable aura of smiles and laughter, a happiness no one else can seem to mimic. Times like these, with Taeil engulfing him in his warm embrace, the maknae looks truly vulnerable.

There’s nothing Taeil wants more than Jihoon to be happy, to have his laughs carry the same happiness they used to, and his smiles be as bright as they once were.

Taeil holds Jihoon a while longer, humming and calmly stroking his hair, listening to Jihoon’s once shaky breathing smooth out, until Jihoon is asleep. Taeil studies his features, so peaceful in sleep. He looks so young, so unaffected by the world’s troubles. The truth is though, he isn’t. He’s growing up, he’s being exposed to everything that’s out there, and that’s caused his light laughs to be weighed down by stones, his smile to dim ever so slightly. But for everyone around him, he pretends he’s okay. He laughs and he smiles, and nobody but Taeil can see the difference between then and now.

So Taeil takes this moment, he savors it and locks it away in his brain. He wants to start crying, and shelter Jihoon as long as he can, so he can save that smile and hold that laugh closer to his heart. He knows Jihoon isn’t a kid and doesn’t need to be babied, but he wants to keep Jihoon safe, safe from the world, safe from the antis and his own problems. But Taeil can’t do that, so he just holds Jihoon closer and hopes tomorrow is better, for Jihoon, and for him, too.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you were wondering the title doesn't come from anything i just thought of it during my trip back to china  
> my stories are often short and disjointed bc i just wanna match a title that sounded really cool in my head so


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